As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the phenomenon of acid house swept across the UK in the mid-to-late 1980s and while a number of clubs, such as the Hacienda in Manchester and Shoom in London, attracted large crowds for their club nights, raves exploded into open areas that were typical venues – warehouses, fields and other places left vacant by Thatcherism. For a number of reasons, including the noise generated by these parties and the use of drugs, these raves started to draw the ire of the police and of the authorities. One briefing note stated that the ‘main problem with acid house parties is the nuisance caused by the noise’ and curiously, stressed ‘[d]rugs are not the main issue’.[1] In a letter to the Leader of the House of Commons, Sir Geoffrey Howe, the new Home Secretary David Waddington wrote that there was also a concern that ‘criminal elements [were] becoming involved’.[2] This concern, ‘coupled with the need to reassure the public that the existing law can be made effective’, Waddington argued, required a new approach.[3] He also noted that 223 parties had been held in London and the South East in 1989, with 96 stopped by the police and another 95 prevented from going ahead.[4]

And so, after a localised and haphazard response by local councils and the police, in late 1989, the Thatcher government proposed a co-ordinated and nationwide effort to clamp down on these ‘illegal’ parties. The aforementioned briefing note outlined that there were four ways to combat these parties:

Under the licensing law that governs public entertainment;

Under Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986;

Under the common law powers available to the police to prevent public disturbances;

The note stated that all indoor events were subject to licensing laws (particularly the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982), irrespective of venue, and that in some cases, outdoor events were also subject to licensing laws, depending on the local authorities. However the largest problem for regulating raves through this mechanism, operated by the local councils, was that ‘most organisers of acid house parties are flouting the law by not applying for a licence’.[6] A report produced by the Association of District Councils explained the authorities had tried to prosecute party organisers under the 1982 Act in the past, but there were many ‘practical difficulties’ with the legislation.[7] This report suggested that a ‘national code of standard conditions’ be drawn up, similar to the code of practice for music events that had previously been established by the Greater London Council.[8] Interestingly the same document also mentioned that it might be pertinent to take into account the recent report by Lord Justice Taylor into the Hillsborough Disaster.[9]

All involved in this discussion felt that one of the key reasons that the organisers did not seek to obtain licenses for their events was that the penalty was far too low – a £2000 fine and/or up to 3 months in prison. In his letter to Howe, Waddington wrote that the penalties were ‘so relatively light that the organisers of these very profitable acid house parties can afford to ignore the law’.[10] Waddington proposed fines be raised to £20,000 and a possibility of up to 6 months imprisonment, commenting that the Association of Chief Police Officers supported these stricter penalties.[11]

One of the problems facing the authorities was that because these raves could be held in any kind of space, trying to police them was difficult. As mentioned above, indoor events were subject to licensing laws, but outdoor events weren’t always covered. For the police, indoor gatherings were not specifically within their remit, but outside assemblies were, under the Public Order Act 1986. An extension of the Public Order Act to include indoor assemblies was considered ‘contentious’[12] and at this stage, looked like legislative overkill (although similar legislation was eventually passed in 1994 to combat outdoor raves with the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act).

In a letter from Home Office official Peter Storr to Margaret Thatcher’s Personal Secretary Andrew Turnbull, he noted that the police were ‘generally relying on their common law powers to prevent a breach of peace’ and that in the past, the police had ‘been able to persuade organisers to pack up voluntarily’.[13] Furthermore, they had ‘on occasion seized sound equipment on the grounds of preventing a breach of the peace’.[14] The aforementioned briefing note acknowledged:

Strictly speaking the police have no power to intervene to stop a party purely on grounds of noise. But if they receive complaints about the noise, they can intervene using common law powers.[15]

However it was argued that the police were often reluctant to intervene in this way, due to the following two reasons:

mainly to the sheer numbers involved in some of the parties – the risk would be too great;

slight nervousness about relying on common law powers alone – this leaves them open to challenge.[16]

It was believed that what was required were greater police powers ‘to act in flagrant cases’ immediately and at the time of night when these parties were occurring. Turnbull wrote to Carolyn Sinclair in the Home Office saying, ‘It will not be sufficient to give local authorities extra powers if they are not around at 3am to enforce [licensing laws]’.[17] The Association of District Councils also called for the police to be given greater powers ‘to seize and remove and apparatus or equipment’ being used by party organisers.[18]

While the primary problem with acid house parties was identified as the public nuisance caused by the excessive noise generated by these parties, the legislation dealing with noise pollution, the Control of Pollution Act 1974 was deemed ‘inadequate to deal with these parties’.[19] It was noted that noise nuisance was a civil offence and the legislation was aimed at factories and other industrial sites, rather than outdoor events. Thus ‘remedy through the courts [was] slow’.[20] The Department of Environment pushed to make noise nuisance a criminal offence,[21] but Turnbull advised the Home Office that Thatcher was ‘doubtful whether greater use of the Control of Pollution Act would be effective as the need was for action at short notice outside working hours.’[22]

Alongside greater penalties under the licensing laws and more explicit powers to allow the police to break ‘illegal’ raves, one of the key proposals made by the Home Office and other agencies was to establish powers to seize profits from party organisers. Powers to seize the proceeds of crime already existed under schedule 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (with a minimum of £10,000 to be confiscated after conviction), and Waddington suggested to Howe that this legislation could be easily amended to incorporate the organisation of these parties into the legislation.[23] On this point, the Home Office’s briefing note stated:

What is needed is a way of hitting at the profit made by the organisers. This should discourage the craze.[24]

It was hoped that these increased penalties and powers of confiscation, as well as more pre-emptive action between the police and local councils, would prevent acid house parties from occurring. The Home Office noted:

No amount of statutory power will make it feasible for police forces to take on crowds of thousands on a regular basis. We cannot have another drain on police resources equivalent to policing football matches.[25]

Incidentally, this was the argument made by Tony Wilson in the final days of the Hacienda – that the police were willing to police Manchester United and Manchester City games, but unwilling to do the same at the famous nightclub to ensure people’s safety.

The following year the Thatcher government passed the Entertainments (Increased Penalties) Act, which increased the penalties for organising an ‘illegal’ party to £20,000 and/or 6 months in prison. As the debate in Hansard shows, these measures were supported by both major parties in the House of Commons. The Criminal Justice Act 1988 was also amended to allow the seizure of profits made by party organisers.

However this did not end the phenomenon of the illegal rave and the Major government introduced the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to deal specifically with raves, which included the seizure of equipment used to put on events deemed illegal. This Act was opposed by many and led to a grassroots resistance by partygoers and activists. But this was a far way off in 1989. We will have to wait a few more years for the internal government records relating to this.

Fabric is not the only club to go close down in recent years, as costs for running clubs in the inner city become more and more expensive. Despite the GFC of 2007-08 and almost a decade of austerity in Britain, the rents for venues in London and other cities across the UK have continued to rise. No reports that I have seen so far have suggested that Fabric faced this particular problem and while many have alleged that the real reason for the closure was a desire by the Council for the venue to be turned into luxury flats or office space, the Council did not own the property and would not have made a direct financial gain from this conversion. The counter-argument to this is that in the neoliberal city, the nighttime economy that Fabric was part of was not as desired as that brought by increasing gentrification of London’s inner city boroughs.

A number have likened this to the closure of the Hacienda in 1997 and its eventual transformation into luxury flats in the early 2000s. The Hacienda had its license revoked in June 1997 after the death of a clubgoer earlier in the year, alleged organised criminals working inside the club and the refusal of the Greater Manchester Police to co-operate with the club’s management to conduct operations that would have kept the club open, citing that it was too costly. Before his death, Tony Wilson argued that the Greater Manchester Police conducted large scale operations every weekend to police football crowds, but were unwilling to do so to protect the club’s patrons. But while the Hacienda was eventually sold to developers, the neoliberalisation and gentrification of Manchester’s landscape did not arrive with the closure of the club – it lay dormant for 18 months and work to convert the building only began a few years later. This coincided with the ‘reimagining’ of Manchester’s city centre after a large section of it was destroyed by an IRA bomb in June 1996.

Adorned on the luxury flats that now occupy the space of the former club on Whitworth Street.

Club culture in the UK had emerged at the periphery of the neoliberal revolution and as I have argued elsewhere, sought to flourish in the spaces that Thatcherism had made vacant, but had not yet occupied. With this brought the attention of the police and the government and under the pretence of a ‘war on drugs’, club culture in the UK became heavily policed and moved into ‘manageable’ spaces, such as clubs like Fabric. But in the ongoing battle between the desires of the neoliberal and nighttime economies, those pushing for further gentrification of the inner city have won out and even these highly policed and contained venues are no longer desirable.

Since the closure of the Hacienda nearly twenty years ago, clubs like Fabric have attempted to work more closely with the police and there has been a shift towards harm minimisation inside these clubs. But while police practices may have changed, the pressures of austerity have discouraged this. So in the end, we may argue that club culture has ended up in the same wasteland after 20 years of trying to ‘regulate’ it and attempts to make it work within the boundaries of ‘the system’.

Most discussions of the soundtrack to the Thatcher years concentrates on the early-to-mid-1980s and the rise of Thatcherism. For example, many have referred to The Specials and The Beat at the time of 1981 riots, Duran Duran and Wham! as the Thatcherite hegemony won the 1983 election and Billy Bragg and the Style Council during the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike. But I want to think about the soundtrack to late Thatcherism (and the early Major years), particularly acid house and early rave culture.

Exported from the United States, house music made its way into the UK club scene in the mid-1980s and acid house became a phenomenon from around 1987 to 1991, before morphing into various strains of rave music in the early 1990s. The rise of acid house coincided with the opening of new wave of clubs across the UK and beginnings of the warehouse and open air ‘raves’, situated against a backdrop of high Thatcherism, which included heightened deindustrialisation and the growth of the high finance capitalism in the City of London

Thatcher was returned to office in 1987 after her third electoral victory and this could be considered the high point of Thatcherism as a hegemonic project. After defeating the trade unions during the Miners’ Strike in 1985, Thatcher unleashed a wave of privatisation and deindustrialisation across the country. Already under pressure, many heavy industries in the north of England, as well as Scotland and Wales, collapsed, leaving to massive unemployment in these regions. Where jobs were available to replace the traditional heavy industries, they were usually unskilled, low paid and short-term, leaving many without the stability of employment enjoyed by the previous generations.

Meanwhile in the south-east of England, especially in London, the economy boomed, fuelled by the deregulation of the finance industry in 1986. Heavy industry, especially around the East End of London and the docks, also dried up and the inner city began its path towards gentrification. The story since the mis-1980s was that London became too expensive for many workers and those who benefited from the boom in the finance industry moved in.

As the north and south of England diverged upon two parallel roads – one towards a post-industrial decline and one towards a post-industrial regeneration – the emerging youth subculture that rose to prominence at this time was acid house and rave/club culture. I believe that the subculture surrounding acid house and the early rave scene reflected this north/south divide and reflected the two Britains that were developing under Thatcher.

Coinciding with the emergence of MDMA (or ecstasy), the acid house and early rave scene became the focus of a moral panic about out of control youth on drugs and gathering en masse to celebrate this fusion of drugs and music. Unlike punk or reggae (or even rap), this subculture was seen to have no redeeming socio-political features and was viewed as just an excuse to indulge in social drug experimentation.

Many viewed acid house and early rave culture as hedonistic and the pretext to (publicly) waste a lot of money of partying. This was probably true to some degree in the south, where the more affluent young people could indulge in this hedonism and spend a considerable amount of money on weekend activities.

But in the north, acid house also exploded – in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and other cities. In the northern acid house scene, it was not just hedonism, fuelled by a large disposable income, but a chance to escape from dreary post-industrial world that had been delivered by nearly a decade of Thatcherism. Not sites of resistance to Thatcherism, but a withdrawal from engagement with it.

Furthermore, with the decline of heavy industry in the north, factories and fields, once the sites of a booming industrial sector, were transformed from empty spaces into potential venues for clubs and raves – the economics of putting on a show was merely finding a suitable sound system. An enterprising person, the kind of whom was praised under Thatcherism, could hire (or buy) a large PA system, bring in some local DJs and with a little promotion, make a lot of money from those entering (and possibly the selling of illicit drugs).

Unlike punk, reggae or folk music, acid house and early rave culture did not really get political and for most, was more an apolitical rejection of the Thatcherite status quo, using music (and the drugs) to collectively cast off the burden that Thatcherism brought down on young people in the late 1980s. Although I would say that acid house was given a political edge by its crossover with the gay scene in Britain in the 1980s. Under Thatcher, gay men and women were persecuted for their sexuality and the AIDS epidemic and Clause 28 were used by those in power to publicly harass gay men and women, arguing that their lifestyles were deviant. Acid house became the dominant sound in many of Britain’s gay clubs and this deviancy and portrayal as the ‘folk devils’ of the 1980s was transformed into a particular subcultural identity, combining the hedonism of acid house culture with the ‘deviancy’ of being gay in Thatcherite Britain.

However the apolitical nature of acid house and rave culture changed in the early 1990s. Concerned about the amount of illicit drugs being allegedly sold and used in the scene, the government and the police cracked down on raves and dance clubs, using the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and a revised version of the Public Order Act 1986 to shut down underground raves and strictly monitor licensed clubs. In 1992, the Major Government started to draft the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill (which eventually became law in 1994), which included an entire section dedicated to the policing of raves. This led to significant political resistance and raves became part of a political battle over the use of public space. Taking some inspiration from the anarchist ‘Stop the City’ protests of the 1980s, a serious protest movement developed, using the method of occupying public spaces and putting on ‘free parties’. This crossed over at stages with the rise of the Reclaim the Streets movement and other green/anarchist protests.

This post has attempted to give an overview of how acid house and early rave culture fits within the wider history of Thatcherism and that of contemporary Britain. What I need to do is delve into primary sources of the period, primarily the documents produced by the subculture itself – the zines, the magazine interviews, the flyers, media reports and government files, as well as any oral history and reminisces of the period. Any suggestions for where to find relevant materials would be greatly appreciated – however, as usual, there are a million other projects that I need to finish beforehand!

Another break from the research side of things. I’m currently trying to declutter my house and have decided that the CD collection needs culling. So I’ve got a bunch of noise/electro/post-rock CDs that need good homes. A few are promos that I got during my zine days and the Digital Hardcore Recordings ones come with info sheets. I’m thinking of putting them up here and on facebook first, seeing if anyone’s interested. Prices are $5 for full albums and $2 for CD singles/EPs (Australian), plus postage. Will post worldwide. And I now have paypal! Let me know if you’re interested in anything via email.

So here’s the list:

Alec Empire Intelligence and Sacrifice Promo 2xCD album (DHR)

Alec Empire Addicted To You (Raw Mixes) CD single (DHR)

Alec Empire Gotta Get Out CD single (DHR)

Aphex Twin The Classics CD album (Distance)

Boredoms Super ae CD album (Birdman)

Boredoms Vision Creation Newsun CD album (Warner)

Cex Oops, I Did It Again! Promo CD album (Rock Action)

Enemymine s/t CD EP (K Records)

Fidel Villeneuve Kill Life CD album (DHR/Less Than Twenty)

The Gossip Standing in the Way of Control: Australian Tour EP CD EP (Popfrenzy)

This is a quick post to announce that the journal Contemporary British History has just pre-published my article on the cinematic portrayals of Joy Division titled, ‘History and the Notion of Authenticity in Control and 24 Hour Party People‘. You can find it here. The abstract for the article is:

In the last decade, two films about Joy Division and the Manchester music scene in the 1970s have been released, 24 Hour Party People and Control, but these films are dramatically different in their production, tone and storyline. However, many critics have seen that the biggest difference between the two is their fidelity to historical authenticity and the ‘true’ history of Joy Division, with Control viewed as more ‘authentic’ than 24 Hour Party People. This article argues that this contrast is a misnomer as no film can accurately portray historical events, although both films strive for authenticity in different ways (through the films’ aesthetics, the mise en scene and the provenance of those involved). This article proposes that cinema can be greatly beneficial to historians of the contemporary era in showing how historical narratives are constructed. This is particularly evident in 24 Hour Party People, which explicitly illustrates how conflicting popular memories can be formed into ‘history’ and historians, like filmmakers, consciously choose which pieces of narratives to use in making their histories.

If you cannot access the article from Taylor & Francis, please email me and I can send you a copy.

Joy Division live as depicted in 24 Hour Party People

EDITED TO ADD: The first 50 people to visit this link can download the article for free.

This is a work-in-progress with a very long gestation period. I began work on it back in 2009-10, but wasn’t really happy with it. I sent out a version (about twice as long as this post) for review to a few journals and got back some very mixed feedback (including one savage review). Since early 2011, it has been on the backburner. But the 33rd anniversary of Ian Curtis’ death this weekend reminded me that I should really re-write the paper. At the prompting of a few twitter friends, I’ve posted up some of the paper as it stands and heartily encourage feedback. I know Brett from Airminded received some great feedback on a paper that he crowdsourced reviews for from his blog, and I’m hoping to get something similar with this. If you are patient enough to read this LONG blog post and want to read an even LONGER version, please let me know and I can email a draft. So without further delay, here is my analysis of history and authenticity in Control and 24 Hour Party People:

Over the years Joy Division have become a huge part of music culture. A lot of people think they know what happened. But they don’t! Anyone who’s ever written a book or made a film about Joy Division, unless they were sat in that van or car with us, they don’t know anything about it. Me, Barney, Steve, Ian, Rob, Twinny, Terry and Dave. Only us lot know what really happened…

This is a reference to the two films released in the last decade which have heavily featured Curtis and Joy Division, 24 Hour Party People, directed by Michael Winterbottom, in 2002 and Control, directed by Anton Corbijn, in 2007. Since the release of Control, there has been much comparison between the two films over the portrayal of the ‘true story’ of Joy Division (and the wider post-punk scene in Manchester), with Control seen by many as more ‘authentic’ than 24 Hour Party People. I argue that this dichotomy between the ‘authentic’ Control and the ‘unauthentic’ 24 Hour Party People is essentially moot as it falsely prescribes to the idea that film can ever depict past events accurately. Film can only ever represent constructs of the past and cannot depict ‘what actually happened’. Despite Control’s attempts to portray itself as ‘authentic’ and its appeals to cultural authority, this paper will argue that 24 Hour Party People’s explicit demonstration of the construction of historical narratives in film is able to provide the audience with a clear understanding of the processes of history and film.

Control depicted the life and early death of Ian Curtis and was directed by Corbijn, a Dutch photographer who had photographed many of the famous visual portrayals of Joy Division in the late 1970s, creating a dark and shadowy imagery that became part of the band’s iconography. The film was inspired by Deborah Curtis’ biography of her time as Ian Curtis’ wife, Touching from a Distance.[1] The surviving members of Joy Division (who were later New Order) were involved in arranging the soundtrack of the film, so the involvement of Corbijn, Deborah Curtis and the remnants of the band, as well as co-production by Tony Wilson, seemed to imply that Control was the ‘definitive’ narrative of what happened in Joy Division, amongst the Manchester music scene in the late 1970s.

This process of imposing a ‘definitive’ narrative may not have been recognised as such, but four years earlier Michael Winterbottom had directed 24 Hour Party People, a film about Factory Records founder Tony Wilson and the Manchester music scene from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Unlike Control, which immersed itself in trying to obtain a realism through period set design and black and white photography, 24 Hour Party People was very self-aware and self-referential about its building upon popular memories and myths of the Manchester music scene. The film has been celebrated by some scholars and commentators, such as Tara Brabazon, for its explicit recognition of how popular memory is created, with Brabazon writing, ‘[w]ithout an understanding of how times and places morph and shift, the film is unreadable’.[2]

24 Hour Party People, directed by Winterbottom and written by Frank Cottrell Bryce, works by taking by the urban myths of the Manchester music scene and attaching them together into a narrative revolving around Tony Wilson, who signed Joy Division to Factory Records and fostered the band’s stark imagery, amongst many other achievements. This may have led to an unremarkable and standard bio-pic, if it was not for the explicit self-awareness of the film and the willingness to overtly demonstrate the techniques used in constructing the films’ narrative. Brabazon describes this process succinctly:

This is, put simply, a film that changes film making. It melts the fourth wall of cinema, cuts up narrative time, corrodes the delineation between sound and vision and provides the strongest application of Cultural Studies theories and ideas on the screen.[3]

The opening scene of 24 Hour Party People sees Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson re-enacting a piece for Granada TV from the mid-1970s, with ‘Coogan/Wilson’ (this term is used by Brabazon to note to slippage between the ‘real’ Tony Wilson, the fictional Wilson and the actor as Wilson)[4] hang-gliding on the Pennines, intercut with archival footage of the ‘real’ Wilson performing the feat in the 1970s. As a display of the self-awareness of the film, its breaking of the fourth wall and the acknowledgement that it is playing with the notion of ‘the truth’, Coogan/Wilson and as the actor playing Wilson says:

You’re going to be seeing a lot more of that sort of thing in the film, although that actually did happen. Obviously it is symbolic, it works on both levels. I don’t want to tell you too much, don’t want to spoil the film, but I’ll just say… Icarus. If you know what I mean, great; if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. But you should probably read more.

Promotional poster for 24 Hour Party People

Contrasts and critiques of 24 Hour Party People and Control

Even while celebrating the aesthetics of 24 Hour Party People, some criticised the film for its refusal to base itself in ‘the truth’, with many describing Control as more ‘authentic’. Peter Hook, bass player for Joy Division, asserted that ‘Control is a hell of a lot more factual than 24 Hour Party People.’[5]Stephen Morris, the drummer for the band, claimed that 24 Hour Party People was ‘more like a romp, and there was a lot of stuff that wasn’t true, or they were exaggerated’, while Control, for Morris, was ‘more factualised’.[6] Morris went on to describe 24 Hour Party People as ‘a bit like Carry On Factory Records’.[7] In his recent history of Factory Records, Shadowplayers (also released as a documentary film) James Nice continued this description of the film as a piece of ‘Carry On-styled entertainment’, which ‘stood guilty of mythologizing the Factory story to an absurd degree’.[8] Nice called Control an ‘infinitely better movie’, which told the story of Joy Division and Ian Curtis with ‘commendable honesty and panache’.[9] Simon Reynolds felt that 24 Hour Party People substituted ‘suicide, drug fuck-ups and business failures’ (although conveyed in a highly entertaining manner) for a proper history of Factory Records, with the result ‘sure to irritate the only people truly equipped to watch it, while those with no emotional connection to the subject will most likely be confused and leave the theatre having gleaned little sense of what was at stake in Factory’s struggle’.[10]

In Critical Quarterly, Neil Young complained that the film was too centred on Wilson’s supposed narrative, ‘the film’s world is the World According To Wilson, a world that begins and ends with the Manchester postcode’.[11] Wilson would contest this type of statement, with his book putting forward his version of the narratives depicted in the film, openly pointing to where his version and the film diverge. In his article, Young describes the film as ‘a slice of real-life cultural history’,[12] but this is effectively incorrect. What is depicted in 24 Hour Party People is not really a History (with a capital ‘H’), but it can be used by historians as an example of how to understand contested narratives. The film explicitly demonstrates that narratives are not wholly contained and are always contestable, and even in contemporary times, popular memory remains as intangible and non-empirical as ever. As Brabazon writes, ‘[o]bviously all films… never present a truth’.[13] Mick Middles, in his history of Factory Records, Factory: The Story of the Record Label (previously released as From Joy Division to New Order: The True Story of Anthony H Wilson and Factory Records), states that both films were unified by ‘the rather dangerous way in which they flitted in and out of historical accuracy’.[14] While ‘dangerous’ may not be the right term to use, exception must be taken in comparing the two films’ approach to historical accuracy – if one film is ‘dangerous’ with using history, it is Control. As argued above, 24 Hour Party People is very upfront in its subversion of history and explicit in its use of myth, but Control seeks to reinforce the myths of Ian Curtis and Joy Division, striving for authenticity when it cannot be achieved. Lindsay Reade, Tony Wilson’s first wife, alluded to something similar in her book with Middles, Torn Apart: The Life of Ian Curtis, writing, ‘Whereas 24 Hour Party People may have been, as Tony once remarked “a collection of lies that manages to tell the truth”, Control was, in my opinion, more a collection of truths that somehow told a lie’.[15]

Promotional poster for Control

The absence of ‘realism’ in cinematic narratives

Although sometimes viewed by historians as trivial and superficial, film is a valuable source for research for historians. Many discussions of film in historical research revolves around what is depicted in film, the mise en scene of the screen, with historians focusing on concepts shared between history and film, such as ‘narrative’ and ‘visual memory’. By concentrating on the narrative of film, historians are primarily concerned with how historical events are portrayed through film and how this cinematic narrative correlates with ‘true’ accounts of what occurred. Comparisons between scholarly narratives and cinematic narratives emphasise the use of film by interested parties to establish their version over other accounts via the medium of popular culture, with historical events in film used to influence contemporary society and establish certain ideas about the past. This discussion, by arguing over the nuances of narrative, seem to imply that film can possibly convey the ‘true’ account – ‘what actually happened’ – which, in the end, it cannot. The fact that ‘film always distorts truth’[16] is something that should be recognised, but this does not mean that historians should be dismissive of film as a tool for historical research. What is so appealing about 24 Hour Party People for historians interested in film is that it explicitly calls into question the notion that film can portray ‘true’ account of particular events and highlights that the narrative of events in film are consciously constructed within the film-making process.

The film-making process of a ‘historical’ film consciously constructs certain narratives and cinematic conventions are adhered to turn complex historical events into a consumable piece of entertainment. As Maarten Peerboom wrote, ‘[a] film in its standard two-hour format… cannot teach us comprehensively about major events’ and ‘[b]ecause of the way we watch and experience movies, even historical movies usually have to focus on a few individuals, and they must, almost out of necessity, fictionalise aspects of the experience.’[17] Stephen Morris, discussing the accuracy of Control acknowledged this point, stating ‘[n]one of it’s true… It’s sort of true, but you have to take liberties when you’re making a film because the truth is too boring’.[18] Using this quote from Morris and influenced by the work of Gilbert B. Rodman, Brian Fauteux highlights that:

it is impossible to accurately retell and represent each and every moment of Joy Division’s musicology. It is necessary to choose from the available documents, interpreting or reinterpreting them in such a way that forms a persuasive aesthetic and narrative, reflecting the popular understanding of the band’.[19]

Fauteux continues to argue that understanding how cinematic narratives are the result of deliberately choosing events, people and places to focus upon to create a coherent story can help us to understand that the same processes of selection and construction are involved in creating history as known by historians.

‘Have you never heard of situationism or postmodernism? Do you know nothing about the free play of signs and signifiers?’, Coogan/Wilson asks a journalist in 24 Hour Party People when confronted by accusations that Joy Division were a band of Nazi sympathisers. As much as this scene is poking fun at Wilson’s character, the film revels in its postmodernism – in its self-referential pastiche, in its promotion of the uncertainty of narratives and in its knowing depictions of how cinematic narratives are created. 24 Hour Party People is clear that it is, as Leen Engelen describes, ‘making unsteady claims about [its] relation to history’[20] and this is one of the reasons why historians should watch the film (especially in contrast with Control), not particularly for the history that it tells, but what the film tells us about the historical process.

Joy Division as depicted in 24 Hour Party People

The falsity of historical authenticity

Film can be an effective, or disruptive, vehicle in shaping ideas about the past, but to articulate the past through film does not mean to recognise it the way it actually was.[21] Historical narratives provided by film can become problematic for our understanding of popular memory, which is portrayed in both Control and 24 Hour Party People, but this problem is embraced by the filmmakers in the latter, while concealed in the former. This raises questions of authenticity. Control attempts to bestow the authority of authenticity upon its narrative of Ian Curtis, perpetuating the iconography of a reserved darkness that continues to surround popular ideas of Joy Division – an iconography that was partly created by Corbijn himself. Corbijn was responsible for the posthumous video for the Joy Division single ‘Atmosphere’, which indulged in heavy gothic symbolism, possibly conveying the song as a post-punk funeral-esque march. Mick Middles described Corbijn’s style, in ‘Atmosphere’ then replicated in Control, as ‘quasi-religious imagery and blackly surreal humour’.[22] But Corbijn’s video seemed to concentrate the tragic figure of Curtis as a substitute for the band Joy Division. As James Nice wrote, ‘the moody monochrome video… seemed to mythologize Ian Curtis, and Curtis alone.’[23] Simon Reynolds highlights the same issue with Corbijn portraying Ian Curtis as a ‘fallen saviour’ in ‘Atmosphere’, ‘where a procession of cowled, monk-like fugures carry a gigantic placard depicting the singer – an outsized religious icon’.[24] For Corbijn, the death of Ian Curtis ­defines his life and his artistic expressions, the whole of Joy Division’s work is interpreted through the ‘palimpsestic narrative’[25] of his suicide. Corbijn admitted this to Paul Morley, saying, ‘It’s like the Bible… You know the end. He dies. So how you tell the story along the way is more important than ever.’[26] But it is contestable as to how this iconography ever related to the ‘real’ Joy Division or how much Ian Curtis’ suicide in 1980 retrospectively determined how we view his life and works.

The authenticity of Control relies on Corbijn using the same techniques utilised in the video for ‘Atmosphere’ and indulges in a ‘new realist’ mise en scene, reminiscent of the portrayal of English northern towns in the films of the 1960s and 1970s. The atmosphere of the film is bleak, where Curtis’ actions are only depicted to convey his slow denouement towards death and Curtis’ surroundings Macclesfield and Manchester, is shown in black and white, a post-industrial environment absent of colour – while at the same time, this monochrome look gives a sense of authenticity, appropriating the feel of black and white footage from a slightly bygone era. These visual cues reinforce the narrative of Curtis as a sombre figure of isolation and pre-determined towards death, the authenticity of Control alluding to an image of Curtis constructed by Corbijn’s previous work for Joy Division and Ian Curtis. As one reviewer put it, ‘Corbijn swaps true pathos for mere visual minutiae and emotional shorthand’.[27]

For Corbijn, his use of black and white in Control reflected the media and consumer representations of Joy Division in the 1970s (which was partly a creation by Corbijn himself). In an interview with Paul Morley, Corbijn explained:

Joy Division always seemed black and white. Their record sleeves were in black and white and the way they dressed was not colourful. I can’t even think of a group shot of Joy Division in colour…Your whole memory of Joy Division is through black and white photographs, so the film just had to be in black and white.[28]

But this quest for authenticity highlights a difficulty for historical films attempting to gloss over the gap between historical events and their cinematic portrayal. Neil Davenport wrote ‘Control looks very beautiful’ and ‘newcomer Sam Riley excels as Ian Curtis’, but stated, ‘And yet, no amount of acting guile can prevent Control from being a little too… stagey. At times, the dialogue is too measured to be convincing, the sets too stylised to be authentic, and the mood too one-paced to capture the chaos and turbulence of the period’.[29] This inevitable rupture between the events of the past and the filmmaker’s attempt to reproduce them authentically was recognised by Jean Baudrillard in his seminal text, ‘The Evil Demon of Images’. Discussing the ‘exact, scrupulous set-pieces’ of films, such as Chinatown, Barry Lyndon and All the President’s Men, Baudrillard declared that their ‘very perfection’ was ‘disturbing’, writing ‘[l]et us be clear: their quality is not in question. The problem is rather that they leave us somehow totally different’.[30] Corbijn’s attempts to recreate or simulate the ‘reality’ of Macclesfield and Manchester in the late 1970s easily slips from ‘realism’ to what Baudrillard called ‘hyperreality’, where what is portrayed has bearing in any reality, past or present. As Baudrillard wrote:

[t]he real does not efface itself in favour of the imaginary; it effaces itself in favour of the more real than real: the hyper-real. The truer than true; this is simulation.[31]

Both Control and 24 Hour Party People portray this ‘hyperreality’, but in Control, this ‘hyperreality’ is concealed, where Sam Riley’s Ian Curtis seems ‘more real than real’, while 24 Hour Party People acknowledges the gap between film and the historical ‘truth’ – the space of the ‘simulacrum’. As Brabazon wrote, the film ‘darted around the simulacrum, playing with punk, acid house, time and narrative’.[32] Baudrillard asserted that the simulacrum referred ‘no longer [to] that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance’ and was model of ‘a real without origin or reality’.[33]

24 Hour Party People, by depicting many of the same events as Control, but in a completely different notion of ‘what actually happened’, demonstrates that there are always alternate versions of narratives and that these narratives have no inherent hierarchy of value or ownership of ‘the truth’. The narrative of film can, thus, never display the historical truth, but can only offer a ‘story’. One of the best examples of the film’s explicit depiction of how narrative and popular memory is contested is Howard Devoto of the Buzzcocks appearing as cleaner in the toilets of a club. Previous to Devoto’s appearance, the film depicts Wilson’s wife Lindsay and Devoto, as characters played by Shirley Henderson and Martin Hancock, as having sex in the club’s toilets, which is discovered by Coogan/Wilson. The character of the cleaner, which Devoto is playing, then morphs into the ‘real’ Howard Devoto, who turns to the camera and states, ‘I definitely don’t remember this happening’. The non-diegetic narration[34] of Coogan/Wilson then announces:

This is the real Howard Devoto. He and Lindsay insisted that we make clear that this never happened. But I agree with John Ford – When you have to choose between the truth and the legend, print the legend.[35]

The ‘real’ Howard Devoto interjecting in 24 Hour Party People – filmed in the toilets of Manchester’s Jilly’s Rockworld before it was closed down

This scene not only ‘melts the fourth wall of cinema’, as Brabazon describes it, but disrupts any appeal to the authority of ‘authenticity’ that a certain narrative can have, demonstrating that all narratives are selected and constructed, and always contested. The ‘real’ Tony Wilson appears on the DVD commentary of the film and speaking about this scene, Wilson states:

I do like the line about this isn’t fair… However this didn’t happen either. I think, um, Lindsay took great offence at this scene as well.

What 24 Hour Party People recognises, which Control tries to obscure, is that film cannot depict what actually happened, but can be used to further a certain narrative if desired. But while 24 Hour Party People revels in showing the fissures in popular memory and the creation of historical narratives, it still indulges in appeals to authenticity to convey a sense of time and place.

Winterbottom employed certain techniques, production elements and narrative devices to express a sense of authenticity. This authenticity is conveyed through the recreation of the Haçienda nightclub, the opening credits designed by Central Station Design (the designers of Factory Records’ ‘Madchester’ period, particularly the sleeves of the Happy Monday records), the cameos by Manchester musicians and the archival footage of the Sex Pistols at Free Trades Hall, of Tony Wilson and of news items from the 1970s. Through this use of archival footage, the film, as Nick Redfern argues, ‘strives to create an impression of “being there”, or being part of the Manchester scene… reinforced by the use of library footage to give the film a “contextual” realism.’[36] Redfern illustrates this point by focusing on a particular scene within the film (referred to colloquially as the ‘Derby Hall Riot’ and given an alternative narrative of events in Control), which:

juxtaposes the re-staging of a Joy Division gig that descends into a pitched battle between the band and a group of neo-Nazi skinheads, with Wilson reading the news in the late 1970s over a series of images (the National Front marching in Manchester, fuel shortages, and strikes by public sector workers).[37]

Authenticity in 24 Hour Party People is also communicated through the character of Tony Wilson as an omnipresent figure evidenced through his non-diegetic narration and to-the-camera addresses. In one scene (repeated in the book 24 Hour Party People: What the Sleeve Notes Never Tell You, with text from the book in square brackets), Wilson claims:

this is not a film about me [this is not my story]. I’m not Prince Hamlet, nor was [ever] meant to be. [This is not a book about me.] I’m a minor character in my own story. [Truly Dickensian hero, bit of a wally, bit of a cipher, surrounded by larger-than-life characters.] This is a film about the music and the people who made the music, Ian Curtis [and] Shaun Ryder and Martin Hannett.[38]

However it is obvious to the viewer that this is not the case – Wilson is the main protagonist and narrator, connecting the various episodes depicted in the film into some form of cohesive narrative. As Macfarlane and Williams write, ‘[t]he rise and fall of Factory is, in this film, largely a matter of his narration’, constructing a story out of events that ‘tended to happen without elaborate casual interconnectedness’.[39] The ‘real’ Tony Wilson acknowledged this in an interview with Spiked Online, ‘I’m in there as the person who ties the two periods – punk and acid – together.’[40] Coogan/Wilson’s homodiegetic account, through his narration and documentary-like addresses to camera, smooth over gaps in the ‘episodic and elliptical narrative’[41] to create a more-or-less linear history, while at the same time, Coogan/Wilson’s narration is often utilised by Winterbottom to undermine any notion of historical cohesion in the film. Simon Reynolds suggests that this dual process, what he describes as the film’s ‘Achilles heel of “negative crossover”’, alienates the audience, contending that those viewers who had ‘absolutely nothing invested in the idea of Joy Division or the whole post-punk era’ would enjoy the film, but ‘to actually follow the film on even a basic narrative level you’d need to know a fair bit about Factory already’.[42] However I would argue that this dual process, where appeals to authenticity and apparent concern about getting ‘the feel’ right are challenged by the film’s conscious breaking of the fourth wall and explicit undermining of established narratives, is the most engaging and rewarding part of viewing 24 Hour Party People.

Joy Division as depicted in Control

Do facts matter in historical film?

In an interview with David Nolan for the book I Swear I Was There: The Gig That Changed the World, a book about the conflicting popular memories of the Sex Pistols’ first Manchester gig at Lesser Free Trade Hall on 4 June, 1976 (recreated in Control and 24 Hour Party People), Tony Wilson said about the latter film, ‘A lot of the movie’s not real, you can be unreal’.[43] (My emphasis) And this raises an important question – do facts matter in historical film, especially in a film like 24 Hour Party People? Many have criticised modern conventional cinema for its dependence upon invention to create incident, plot and character and its sacrifice of facts for the purpose of the cinematic experience. Robert A. Rosenstone acknowledges this criticism has dominated the discourse on the relationship between films and history.[44] But this criticism is, in essence, a misnomer. The ‘realism’ of a film’s narrative is always problematic and debates over a film’s content can detract from a basic historical premise. That is that film, even if it was entirely ‘factual’, can never replicate the historical ‘truth’.

Like the criticism for the explicit indulgence in urban myths and postmodern revelry in 24 Hour Party People, criticisms of cinema, like that made by Siegfried Kracauer, for filmic attempts of ‘realism’ – ‘because the past they try to resurrect no longer exists’[45] – seems to miss this important point. As Osip Brik wrote about Sergei Eisenstein’s 1928 film October, ‘every departure from historical fact is permissible… where it has been developed to the level of the grotesque and the extent of its correspondence to any reality is no longer relevant’.[46] The same sentiment is expressed by Rob Brydon, who played a local music journalist in 24 Hour Party People, who said in an interview with Paul Morley for The Guardian:

I’m sure there will be people like you saying this is wrong, that’s wrong, that wouldn’t have happened then… but in the end it’s not about the period detail, it’s about getting the [chosen] spirit across.[47]

In traditional film theory, the creation of a cinematic narrative that allows the audience to suspend their disbelief requires the audience to ‘forget’ the limits of the cinematic experience and accept the notion of film as a ‘true’ visual representation of events. Recognising the limits of the cinematic experience, such as breaking the fourth wall or acknowledging the film-making process, would ruin the enjoyment of the film for the audience. With 24 Hour Party People, recognition of the limits of the film to portray ‘what actually happened’ and the film’s explicit discussion of how the film is constructed is, I would argue, a significant part of the film’s appeal and why the film is such an interesting source for historians interested in film, contemporary history and popular culture.

The difference in how individuals or groups perceive the same events is indicated in both Control and 24 Hour Party People, who seek to cover a similar historical period in very different ways. Winterbottom and Cottrell Bryce make this very apparent in their film, while Corbijn’s film seeks to underplay this obvious point. Peter Hook recognised this in an interview with Paul Morley:

‘The whole beauty of the story,’ says Hooky, ‘is that everyone remembers everything differently. Everyone has a different memory of what happened. Not that anyone is right or wrong, you just saw it from a different point of view,… What Anton [Corbijn] has done is make the story from his memories of how he felt at the time…’[48]

The ‘real’ Tony Wilson and Steve Coogan

A review in the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound magazine said, ‘Future generations curious about 1980s and 1990s dance culture could do worse than take in a double bill of 24 Hour Party People (2004) and Party Monster’.[49] Ty Burr, in a review of Control for The Boston Globe, wrote, ‘[w]hen he [Sam Riley as Ian Curtis] launches into “Transmission,” though, you feel as if you’re sampling a secret history;… and they [the actors as Joy Division] successfully re-create that spare, unyielding wall of gloom’.[50]However we should be wary about our understanding of the history of the Manchester music scene, of Joy Division, of the Haçienda, being informed by films such as 24 Hour Party People or Control, recognising that there is a irreconcilable disconnect between the historical event and its cinematic recreation. These films represent a simulacrum and Baudrillard warns us of the simulacrum’s allure, stating, ‘It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real’.[51] Film can construct narratives based on history, but it cannot show us the past and we should not substitute one for the other.

The two films discussed provide a wonderful opportunity to analyse how films create historical narratives and how past events can be interpreted in very different ways. By comparing the films together, we can see that both recreate the same events with widely varying narrative details and it is the onus of the audience to discern which one (if any) is more ‘authentic’ or ‘true’. As mentioned before, this appeal to authenticity is made by both films, but Control’s reliance on black-and-white realism conveys a greater endeavour to depict the film as ‘what actually happened’, while 24 Hour Party People undercuts any appeals to authenticity with its openness about its selection of what narratives it employs and the points of contention within competing popular memories of the era. The latter makes candid reference to the fact that it is interested in creating stories about the contemporary past, while the former conceals its construction and what it seeks to communicate with the audience. The divergence between the approaches of the film make them a particularly fascinating case study for historians interested in the use of film in contemporary history and the history of British popular culture. As Peter Burke wrote, ‘cinematic (or indeed literary) techniques… may be used in a superficial way, to dazzle rather than to illuminate, but they may also help historians [understand] their difficult task of revealing the relationship between events and structures and presenting multiple viewpoints.’[52]

Stiff Kittens (later Warsaw, then Joy Division, then finally New Order) as depicted in 24 Hour Party People at the infamous 4 June, 1976 Sex Pistols gig

Tony Wilson said in an interview with Simon Reynolds, ‘Most of the things in the film never happened. But the miracle of the film is that it’s a complete bunch of lies, but it tells the truth’. Cited in, S. Reynolds, Totally Wired, p. 69

[25] This is a phrase borrowed from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, albeit in a much different context. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988, p. 281

[35] However even this quote shows the slipperiness of popular memory. The actual line from the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is ‘’w]hen the legend becomes fact, print the legend’, which seems to suggest that the transition of popular myths into accepted ‘fact’ is a much more organic phenomenon, rather than the conscious choice between ‘the truth’ or ‘the legend’ as proposed by Coogan/Wilson.

Following on from this post in January, this post is the second installment in my series of curating the music flyers of the Adelaide scene between 2003 and 2008. Here we go again down memory lane…

Minke was a bar underground below the Rosemont Hotel on Hindley Street. It wasn’t really a band-oriented venue, but a place to go at the end of the night. Snap! Crack! Le Pop! were a great three-piece who played electro, tongue-in-cheek songs. The band became simply Snap Crakk when Michael and Yama moved to Melbourne.

The Underground was a Christian-run music venue that was used by a lot of hardcore/straightedge bands. As it had no bar, it was all ages. Hardcore kids used to line up all down Waymouth Street for gigs. The Paddington Bear Affair were a great band – a six piece of underage kids (when they started) that played screamo styled music. Their drummer ended up playing in my crappy band.

K Records’ legend Calvin Johnson played an ‘unplugged’ (literally) set at Rocket Bar on Valentines Day 2005. As he only played acoustic guitar with no PA, the audience had to be very quiet or they drowned him out.

Jacques Chirac Attacque was my band’s name for this show only. We had a policy of changing our name for each gig. As the flyer says, we were also Space Horse and Go Black Panthers! at different shows, as well as Jimmy Floyd and the Hasselbainks, Not in the Face, Time for a Tiger, Hot to Trotsky, the Hated Salford Ensemble, Stroszek, and Mike Rann and the Mechanics, amongst others. This show sticks out in my memory for two reasons. Firstly, while the Jade Monkey was a well-known Adelaide music venue, our drummer had never played there and got lost, only arriving two minutes before we were supposed to go on stage. Secondly, we took the French theme seriously and had a fight with baguettes on stage during our last song.

This is an alternative flyer to the gig at Avalon featured in the last post. It was probably designed by the guys from My Sister the Cop, who always had very intricately drawn flyers.

Jemima Jemima were quite an avant-garde band, with Michael from Snap Crakk on guitar. They released one CD on Unstoppable Ape Records and broke up very shortly afterwards I believe. Sweet Raxxx were Adelaide’s answer to Gravy Train!!!

Limited Express (Has Gone) was a Japanese band that was touring with The Roger Sisters. The night before their show at the Grace Emily, the kids from Paddington Bear Affair organised a secret show for them. The venue was supposed to be the squat on Coromandel Place (next to the Historian Hotel), but some of the occupants of the squat refused to let people in. The bands thus played in the lounge room of a small flat on Hindley Street. It was the debut gig of I’m Gonna F**king Kill You, who were practising in the flat when a whole bunch of people rocked up, having walked down Hindley Street after finding out that the show at the squat was not going ahead.

No Through Road were a regular feature at the Jade Monkey. As they were headlining, I’m assuming it was the full six piece version of the band at this particular gig. When No Through Road debuted the full band at the Jade Monkey, the lead singer Matt apparently fell of the drum kit and hit his head during their cover of Weezer’s ‘Say It Ain’t So’. Very rock n’ roll.

The Proscenium was a goth/electro club off of Hindey Street that had been a famous Adelaide venue since the 1980s. The basement wasn’t used that much, but occasionally had bands. This show was the last gig for Love Like… Electrocution with their original guitarist Tim, who ended playing in Snap Crakk.

Brutal Snake started off as a solo act featuring Tom (from 1984, St Albans Kids and Love Like…) playing very noisy guitar, before becoming a full band. Artax Mission had a similar noisy post-rock guitar sound. I am assuming that this was still when The Exeter had gigs in the back beer garden, rather than in the front room. Brutal Snake in the front room would have been, well, brutal.

So there you have it – another round of flyers. Hopefully this shows some of the subcultural history of Adelaide, which often goes undocumented. If anyone has any memories of these shows, or have any other flyers that they’d like to see up on the web, please comment below.